Category: Parents

This blog post is sponsored content on behalf of BusyKid. All opinions or experiences expressed are that of my own.

I am all about teaching kids money management skills. As a single mom for most of the firstborn child’s life, I was a master at budgeting and making sure that the little money I made lasted a long time. While she may have better money management skills due to seeing me be super strict on a budget for most of her life, the boys haven’t had that same experience. As a mom to a teenager, an Asperger’s boy and a hyper boy; it’s important for me to find tools that work to teach them how to develop good financial skills. I want nothing more than to teach them how to work smarter and budget so that they can excel financially in their adult life.

I recently heard about BusyKid, this app that allows parents to give stock versus gifts this holiday season! I know, I know, surely you are wondering what in the world a kid would need with stock at the age of 10 or even 3? Well, there’s more to it, let me share more details with you.

Important FYI’s for Parents

Price is now $14.95 for the entire family

They are introducing the BusyKid Spend Card, a reloadable Visa® prepaid card, where kids can move their allowance in order to spend in stores or online

For a limited time, 2 kids of each new family will receive a free $10 stock. We want kids to learn how to invest so we decided to give them their first experience in dealing with the stock market.

How Does BusyKid Work?

Oh gosh, this a super easy app to use. I am not even kidding! So you sign up, set chores, set prices for chores and then the kids do the work. Ah, I love the sound of that. Every Friday the kids get to earn their allowance. At this point they can invest it in stock, they can have it as cash, they can spend it, whatever they desire. Use BusyKid to teach your kids how to invest, save and spend money easily. This is by far the best gift this holiday season because it helps to keep your home clean, the kids learning skills that they need as adults and parents to not get a headache trying to nag kids.

Why Kids Need Financial Guidance at Home

Basic financial topics such as saving, investing, budgeting, credit, taxes, loans should be taught with the same importance as reading, writing, math and science in our schools. It’s not the fault of teachers, but we aren’t preparing our children properly to face a world of hard financial decisions. In a recent study, the majority of parents received a grade of C or worse when it came to understanding basic finance. When questioned, about 80% of parents agreed that paying a child this weekly allowance as a great way to teach their kids money management.

You don’t need to pay your kids $5 a chore, with BusyKid you can easily assign the price per chore and let the kids earn a little bit. Heck, my trio only earns about $2 per week on average and they are mopping floors, vacuuming, taking the trash out, loading and unloading dishwasher; just to name a few things. The house is cleaner and my 3 kids are actually discussing good money spending habits between the three of them, it’s rather cool to witness how BusyKid can help inspire siblings to discuss finances and learn from each other.

So what are you waiting for? Parents … go on buy stock, not gifts this holiday season so that your child can be set up for financial success in their adult life.

Check out BusyKid online and be sure to connect with their social media accounts to stay up to date with their latest information.

The bond between a parent and a child is something which a lot of people see as unbreakable. Of course, though, like any relationship, it’s not always possible to see eye to eye with your little ones. When you’re dealing with someone who has little control over their emotions already, additional factors can make a real mess. To help you out with this, this post will be going through some of the steps which can be taken to improve your time with the little ones. Along with this, you’ll also have to do a lot of the work yourself, with time being the biggest investment you’ll have to make.

Identifying The Cause

Whether your child is merely sulking or has been distant for a long time, it’s important to try to identify the cause of the issues before you try to fix them. To do this, you will have to think very logically, using your experience as a parent to help you along the way, while also considering a wide range of ideas. Below, you can find some of the different examples of the types of issues which can cause trouble in your relationship.

Some Examples

For a lot of parents, the addition of a child to their life is just another set of responsibilities which have to be taken care of. Of course, you love your child very much, but you also have other important things to do. For them, though, you are the most prominent figure in their life. They will emulate the things you say and do, learn from you, and yearn to spend time around you. Without this sort of interaction, it will be very easy for them to become distant with you.

Being the emotional sponges they are, a lot of kids will also pick up on the way that their parents are feeling. If there is a lot of anger or sadness in your home, your child will reflect this, and it will be hard to keep them happy. To avoid this sort of issue, any conflicts should be handled away from the kids. Along with this, though, it could also be worth trying to settle differences for good before it’s too late.

While you’re working or away from your child for other reasons, it’s often hard to think about the life they lead. Of course, though, they have a lot going on when you’re not around, and it can all impact the way they feel and act around you. Their social life, schooling, and other little stresses all make a difference. So, it’s important to be there for your child, especially as their work gets harder.

Not all relationship issues between kids and parents are down to the environment. Instead, in some cases, you may find that there’s something much deeper to your child’s turmoil. Conditions like autism and PTSD can be very hard for a child to come to terms with, often resulting in attachment difficulties and other problems in their early life. An expert is the best help you can get for this.

Seeking Some Advice

It won’t always be a simple case of observing your child and using the knowledge you have to identify your issues. Instead, there could be problems which you’ll never notice, and this can make life very hard. To help you with this, you just need to look for the right advice to improve things. The internet is the very best place for this.

Over the years, loads of blogs, forums, and message boards have been started up with the aim of helping parents to see eye to eye with their children. Using their own experiences, parents share what they’ve learned, along with the tools you can use to help you. Often, a simple post on a site like this will be enough to identify your problems. But, along with this, it could also help to do some research.

The only real issue with these sorts of sites is the amount you can trust them. It can be hard to know whether or not the information you’re reading is true, as it has come from a user just like yourself. To solve this, doing a little bit of research could see you getting to the bottom of your kid’s childhood attachment problems. There are loads of specialist sites out there with the tools to help you in this area.

Getting The Right Help

Finally, it’s time to think about the solid help you can get to solve your issues which are more than just articles and posts. In some cases, getting to the bottom of your issues will take a long time. To help you with this, professionals can be hired to work with everyone, providing the tools and resources to build a very happy family.

In most cases, the best help you can get will come from a therapist. By simply talking to your child about their life, using easy questions, a professional like this will be able to form a good idea of what might be bothering your child. With this, they will be able to give advice and make suggestions, giving you the power to make a difference. Of course, though, you should always read some reviews to make sure the person you choose is as good as they claim.

Along with someone to support your child, it can also be helpful to put the whole family through this sort of treatment. In most cases, issues in their environment will impact a kid more than anything else. So, it could be that the problems lie with you, and your child is merely reflecting them back at you. You won’t know until you’ve been to see someone, though. So, it’s worth getting yourselves booked in.

Hopefully, this post will be just what you need to improve the mood of the little ones in your family. There are a huge variety of different factors which can all impact this part of life, with a child’s simplified brain struggling to understand it all. Getting to the bottom of them is very important. Otherwise, it will be impossible to make a positive change.

Having a new baby is going to take adjustment of all kinds. There are few things that can prepare you for the new responsibility, for the sudden room you have to make in the budget and for the sleep you’re not going to be having. Sleep training is easily one of the more difficult parts of being a new parent, but you can do it with a little help from wisdom that’s been passed from mother to mother.

Take a seat

There are few things that can help a baby get to sleep as much as getting relaxed. A lot of parents will walk around with their baby or even take them out for a drive in their car seat to help them get to that state. However, it can be as simple as getting a seat like those from www.therockingchaircompany.com. Rocking your baby has been proven to be great for helping them doze off. However, having to do it constantly yourself will get tiring and frustrating for a parent, so get something that can take the weight off your shoulders a little.

Be light strategic

Your child is very sensitive to light. We all are, really, with key hormones in our brain ruling over sleep directly linked to light exposure. In the daytime, you might be tempted to cut the lights if they show signs of napping. However, this can get in the way of their body clock, so don’t do it. At night, you can slowly ease them into nighttime sleepiness with lights like those shown at www.heavy.com with dimmers attached. Turning off the light and just waiting for them to take their cue won’t work as well as taking the time to induce drowsiness.

Midnight snack

If your baby is having more trouble sleeping for long stretches at night, then a dream feed can really help. It might seem counter-intuitive to wake them up for a feed, but it’s a clever way of managing their body’s needs. Babies can only really have one long sleep a day and most often it’s hunger that gets in the way. A dream feed can help them sate that need so it doesn’t wake them more fully. Keep the lights dim and gently feed your baby before setting them back down.

Practice some restraint

As a new parent, it’s easy to be hypersensitive to a baby calling, especially at night. Those maternal triggers will fire and you’ll be tempted to go make sure everything’s alright. You shouldn’t ignore your baby if there’s sustained crying. However, using a baby monitor to suddenly rush in at every sound, or even brief cries, can be disruptive not only to the child. It can make you more alert than you need to be, getting in the way of your own night’s sleep due to stress. If you do want to check in on them, just be sure to keep lights dim and don’t look them in the eyes if they’re not sleeping fully.

Above all else, remember to treasure those nights where they sleep right through. They will be rare at first, so take advantage of them and try not to be a “helicopter parent” when they do.

From the moment you find out you are going to be a mom to the day they turn one, you are going to have your face buried in baby books in an attempt to control the nerves that have you shaking like an autumn leaf. However, from our experience in motherhood, we’ve learned that there are more than few truths that baby books leave out; a few secrets that will spring up on your completely unwittingly.

So, to help prepare you for the home truths that hit harder than an Alex Rodriguez home run we have pulled together some things every experienced mom will nod their head at and things you probably haven’t heard about until now. We gotta tell you, this whole being a mom thing is the most entertaining adventure you have ever been on.

You Will Sing Songs All The Time

At bathtime, during feeds, when you’re getting them dressed and preparing the usual dinner of pureed sweet potato; you will catch yourself singing another Disney song. Or a nursery rhyme. Or just a song where you have rewritten the lyrics to squeeze your baby’s name into it. You will become an all-singing and all-dancing mom that is happy to get paid in smiles.

Puke, Poop And Pacifiers

It is going to be an unprecedented experience for you (hopefully), but from the day your baby is born, you will have to get used to them being addicted to their pacifier and you getting puked on sixty-three times a day with the odd leaky poop thrown in there for good measure.

Your Google History Will Be Mental

Within a month, your Google history will be a minefield of giggles. You’ll find that you subscribed to Inner Parents just so you could find out what the best wipe warmer of 2017 is. There will be ten Google searches a day whereby you were searching, “what is wrong with my child,” and you will find yourself asking Siri, “How do moms with twins do it?”

You Will Leak Milk At Some Stage

Whether it be because you didn’t realise it took five days for your breast milk to come in after giving birth, or you didn’t manage to pump your boobs in time or, most embarrassingly of all, forgot to put your breast pads in; you will find that your boobs will leak milk and your shirt will display the results for all to see.

Your Kid’s Fashion Comes First

So long as your child looks as cute as hell, you will not care about the fact you are going out with sick-knotted hair, wearing a poop stained shirt and only one shoe on. You sacrifice your fashion needs to make sure your kid looks amazing; we all do it.

No Time To Shower

All those years you took the luxury of a shower for granted. But now it is too late because, well, you simply don’t have time for a shower anymore. Nope. The time will come, one day, but even then it won’t be a peaceful one as your kid bangs on the door and begs you to let them in. So, for now, your biggest luxury is dry shampoo. Sorry.

Kids are so changeable these days it feels almost impossible to keep up. They might have liked something yesterday, but today they’ll deny ever being interested. Anything from the food that they like to the toys and games that they want to play with changes from one day to the next. It’s not important to know everything about your child’s life, it’s important to keep up to date for a lot of reasons. Their safety is always a concern because they could unwittingly be putting themselves in dangerous situations without knowing. It’s also impossible to buy them gifts that they like if you don’t know what the next big thing is. Having a better understanding of your child’s likes and dislikes improves the time you spend with them as well. If you’re completely clueless about your kid’s life, try these methods to gain a bit of insight.

Online Resources

The internet is full of all sorts of great parenting resources and you can use them to find out what kids are into at the minute. When you’re trying to buy gifts for young children, they’ll want exactly what all of their friends are playing with. There are plenty of sites that can tell you what the most popular toys for toddlers are at the moment. But make sure you check these sites regularly because it’s always changing. When your kids start to get a little older it’s even harder to understand them. Sometimes, they’re using so much slang it’s like they’re speaking another language. Luckily, there’s a great new site called careful parents that can help you with that. It has loads of great information on slang terms and what they mean, as well as the latest trends in toys, games, fashion, and all sorts of other things. Have a quick browse and your eyes will be opened.

Talk To Other Parents

As a parent, you’ll pick up on small snippets of your children’s lives but you’ll never get the whole picture. But if you meet other parents and you all fit those bits and pieces together like a jigsaw, you can start to build a better idea of what they’re all up to. If you hear or see anything that you’re concerned about, ask the other parents if they’ve heard anything similar. By combining your efforts, you can keep a better eye on your kids and find out the things that they aren’t telling you.

Ask Them

It seems like an obvious thing to say but many parents are afraid to do it. The key to getting them to open up to you is to be casual about it and not push them. Don’t sit them down and demand to know everything that they do when you’re not around. It’ll just make them feel persecuted and they won’t want to speak to you at all. Just take a general interest in the things that they like doing and let them know you are open to their likes and dislikes. This will build more trust between you and they should hopefully tell you more about their lives.

Don’t expect to find out everything about your child’s life, just try to keep on top of anything that might be a worry.

When a baby enters your life, you have to make serious lifestyle changes to accommodate for the beautiful new bundle of joy. You must not forget that although the child looks and feels like any other normal human body, they are in fact incredibly fragile. If you don’t know your own strength, you could end up hurting or possibly damaging the baby. Becoming a parent is a blessing, but it’s also a full-time job the second your bring the child home. They are solely your responsibility, and the choices you make will impact the baby directly. Everyone runs into challenges, but those who are unprepared often experience the most difficulty when trying to settle in to regularly caring for the baby. There are a few things you should consider, to make your job easier and safer for your little one.

Make regular night checks

One of the most vulnerable times for any baby is when they’re left completely alone. Of course, this happens when the baby is sleeping at night. If you don’t have enough room in your bedroom to have the baby’s cot next to your bed, there’s no other reliable way to check up on him or her without a baby sound machine. You can hear any distressing calls or cries during the night, while the baby is in the next room or at the opposite end of the home from your bedroom. The sound machine will alert you according to the decibel level, whereby you can then go and physically check up on your baby to soothe them of any stress or discomfort the baby might be feeling. Sound machines are also portable, so whether you’re going on holiday or a trip to a domestic resort, you can always take them with you.

Train the family dog

If you have a family pet, this new arrival into the home is going to greatly intrigue them. It’s very rare that pets become hostile to newborn babies, but it has been known to happen. When you bring in the baby, keep the dog outside of the room and the house. Rest the baby in the cot or in a buggy, and then let the dog in a while keeping control of it with either a hand on the collar or blocking its path as you get closer to the baby. It will want to sniff and smell the baby and try to familiarise itself with this new creature that it has never met. Allow the dog to sniff the baby from a distance but don’t allow it to lick or touch the baby just yet. Slowly but surely the dog will calm down, and just see the baby as another one of the family. However, don’t leave the baby and the dog alone together and always make sure your pet is not being aggressive to the child.

Many young and first-time parents fall into obvious safety traps when caring for their newborn baby. However, you have to change the way you think and your lifestyle so that you can accommodate the baby into your lifestyle. Integrating the dog to be careful around the baby takes time and constant vigilance. Monitoring the baby’s comfort level during the night is crucial to help you avoid things like cot rash.

One of the best comforts for a tiny, crying baby is a pacifier. Baby needs comfort, Mom needs sleep; it’s a no brainer that a pacifier is probably one of the best tools in the parental box of tricks. It’s your child’s first love and as with anything, breaking up is hard to do! The pacifier has provided you with hours of quiet while the baby soothes themselves into naptime oblivion, but the time is coming to start weaning off that comfort. Some like to wait until a child is starting to talk before weaning, which is a good idea!

Teething is a huge reason a lot of parents turn to a pacifier. Not only does baby have something to hold onto and chew, they have a soother with them to rely on when the pain gets a little too much. There’s no true ‘right time’ to start weaning off the pacifier, as the time is going to be individual to each child. However, you can have a chat with your kids dentist and talk about when a pacifier starts to impact their dental care and growth and make a decision based on that. If you want to get your child off the pacifier earlier, then we’ve got some tricks that will help you to make the transition a little easier for you and for baby!

Timing It Right. Did you know that a pacifier can help to prevent SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome)? At night, babies often forget to stop breathing and the presence of a pacifier in their mouth can remind their brain to breathe as the tongue relaxes and triggers a suckling reflex. Try not to wean off the pacifier too early, and avoid trying to wean during big life changes.

Cold Turkey? Perhaps Not. Every parent knows their child individually, so you will know when your child is ready to let go. Sometimes, you can tell they are ready before they can tell you, so even though it may make for a rough couple of days, you can take the pacifier away and endure the crying. The best idea is from around 12months, start refusing the pacifier in the day time unless for a nap. Distraction techniques with toys work wonders here! Once they’re used to only using it for nap time, start to wean off the night usage by using….

The Dummy Fairy! Children respond well to fairy tales, especially ones that involve a gift. It may be bribery for some, but who can say they’ve avoided parenthood without bribery?? About a month before the pacifier is permanently in the trash, start talking about a fairy who brings a present and takes the pacifiers to the new baby. The night before, leave the pacifier in an envelope and swap it for a small gift for being such a big girl or boy.

Getting your child on board to give up a pacifier doesn’t have to be a difficult feat. It means you have to be strong and stay calm and they will emulate that behaviour. Good luck!

It can be hard to find the time to do many things when you’re a parent, not least working out and sticking to an exercise regime. However, there have been developments over the years that have meant that children are able to get involved in the exercise that we’re doing – even if they’re not having to do it themselves. But just how do we do it, especially when they’re a lot younger?

Buy A Bike Trailer

Children love getting out in the open air. Not only is it great for them to get out and see the world, but it also tires them out, meaning that you’ll be able to stick to a routine in regards to nap time. Bike trailers are brilliant at providing a safe space for your children (yes, you can fit in more than one!) to go whilst you are riding along. There’s more information about which are the best ones to suit your bike and budget from BikeTrailersHub.com, and it’s definitely worth looking around as there are so many to choose from. A lot of them can convert into strollers that you can use to jog with should you not fancy riding a bike around, so you can mix and match with different types of cardio to work your way back into exercise gently.

Got A Sling? Use It!

If your child is still small enough to fit into a sling (most can be used up until they’re five years old), there’s a lot of potential for you to be able to use it in relation to exercise. Of course there is the obvious walks and hikes that you can do, but there are now dance classes appearing all over the world that you can take part in – and so can your child. They are safe dance moves that rely on the extra weight of your child to provide the workout that you need. Even small things like bending down and getting yourself up again with your child in tow can be enough to bring on the sweat.

Set Up An Obstacle Course

If you have an outside space which is currently going unused, setting up an obstacle course together can be a great way to bond. There are certain ideas online that you can use to give you inspiration, but you may want to focus on creating things which are specific to your workout routine. It doesn’t take much money to do, especially if you can find people who are willing to donate things like old tyres, bricks and planks of wood for you to be able to make your own routes up. Kids will have great fun trying to work through the bits that they are able to do, and you can even set up competitions to see who can do it in the quickest time. Try and think outside of the box – there’s a lot of creativity that can be put to good use when working together to make an obstacle course.

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